Someday I won’t be so lucky. Someday I won’t be so pretty. Someday perhaps a child of mine might die, perhaps the flaky patch on my elbow will develop into cancer, perhaps I’ll burn my face, perhaps I’ll lose it all. Hubris is a funny thing. Three men tonight were on their knees for me, and I sit here in bed eating fast food from Reno, Nevada, two hundred miles away, because on a whim I requested it, and it was delivered. I said I will destroy you. He only smiled, goofily grinning, missing a tooth, hearts in his eyes.

The most recent love of my life said goodbye, goodbye, goodbye for reals this time my heart is bleeding for you and you won’t hold it. I said no, I am too busy flirting with this new boy, this ginger bearded elk-killer, we are going to take the dogs out, yes, MY dog, my little Parker dog whom we decided on together, our little test-child, and we didn’t last, and now he is mine. Thank you for paying for all the vet bills, and take care.

Ha, hah, I am free. I am free to sit in bed and smoke pot and write existential bullshit onto my computer while the dog lays at my feet, the only companion I desire these days.

The phone buzzes and I wonder which one of them it is. As though I’m twenty two again. Perhaps this is why I do this. Grasping at straws. Grasping at youth. Carefully cultivating the cocked head and the sideways smile, the brief hand on the shoulder, the upturned corners of the mouth that I know men find so endearing. Perhaps I’m punishing my father. Perhaps my mother was doing the same to hers when she drove around in her jaguar, smiling sweetly. It’s funny to imagine my face as hers, but it is. She looks so much more like my sister. But the cunning, the cunning, that is where I see her in me. The plotting, the plan Bs, the one foot out the door. I ruined so many of them. I was the one to beat for so many of them. Where is the winning in that? Have I done it? Have I succeeded? Will I live forever?

I am bleeding again. Another month without the feeling. I played with the children today, picked them up and placed them into the notch on my hip where they belong. We danced to reggae. I swung them upside down and they laughed and laughed. Noah said one day I’d be a wonderful mother. Or auntie. I said I didn’t care which. But I was lying. I want to be a mother.

I took charge tonight and made Betty introduce me to this new man. Her roommate said that “You can call me Al” was Betty and her sister Alex’s song. “I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me you can call me Al.” I had loved that. I felt like I had first heard Graceland while I was in the womb.

This man is shorter than I generally entertain, but I like the way his nose turns up, and I like  that he hunts, and I like the way he said that because I played mandolin and hunted and cooked, that he’d fall in love with me.

Yes, do, do, I am so very lovable. Please do, I so deeply need to be wanted. Nevermind the damage, I’m pretty, so it’s tolerable. Don’t mind the man in the corner kissing me desperately on the forehead, he is one past, and it’s you I’d like to have dinner with now. Perhaps he’ll call and interrupt us, and I’ll smile at you with apologies on my brow, and you’ll understand, and you’ll hold me, because you’re the one in my good graces now. Aren’t you lucky? Lucky us.